The Tales We Tell Ourselves: Review of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Engines of Reason

Filip R. Zahariev Under Review:Engines of Reason. Adrian Tchaikovsky. Tordotcom, September 2026. Adrian Tchaikovsky’s new novella Engines of Reason picks up fifteen years after the moving finale of 2021’s Elder Race, itself a remarkable and rewarding mash-up between fantasy and sci-fi. The beginning of Elder Race was all too reminiscent of your favorite classical fantasy: a princess, off on a quest to fetch a wizard in the hopes he’ll know how to deal with a looming threat to the realm. Only the princess lacked the authority to do anything of the kind, the crisis turned out to be nightmarish body horror, and the wizard was no wizard at all but an anthropologist whose home, a future Earth, has been silent for over three hundred years. This sequel continues in the vein of its predecessor, with the unique tropes of these two genres conjoined together. Returning point of view characters Nyr and Lyn are joined by newcomer Sendra, a brigand at the end of his rope as the narrative commences.…